DECLARE YOUR FAMILY EQUAL!

Today is a bittersweet moment for the LGBT community, our families and friends. The first presidential candidate to directly address LGBT family issues, Senator Barack Obama, has now become President-Elect Obama. What this means for our families’ health and happiness and the future of our movement for family equality is enormously positive.

But we also bore witness to disappointing losses with the passage of Prop 102, the Arizona marriage ban; Amendment 2, the Florida marriage ban; Act 1, the Arkansas foster and adoption ban; and now, as of today, Prop 8, the initiative to eliminate the right to marry for same-sex couples in California.

These votes hurt our families deeply and impact how we nurture and protect each other. I know right now many of you are angry, frustrated, scared and not knowing what to do. But we have to remain focused on the future, on the needs of our kids and on demanding the dignity and rights our families deserve.

The Family Equality Council has created a number of resources to help you talk about this election and to channel your emotions into forward movement for change.

Starting today, we are asking families and friends across the country to submit photos of themselves holding signs declaring their equality. To find out more about this new campaign, DECLARE YOUR FAMILY EQUAL, visit our website at www.familyequality.org. We're going to create a video next week of the photos you submit and share it with the world so that while everyone is watching, waiting for us to react, they can see how strong, how beautiful, how truly resilient our families are.

The deadline for submitting photos to be included in the video is soon -- Sunday, November 9, 11:59pm EST. We want to create this video and start sharing it with the world as fast as we can. You can submit your photos and more at www.familyequality.org.

With all that has happened in the last few weeks, especially in the last few days, we here at Family Equality Council want you to know that our mission has not changed and our determination to ensure equality for LGBT families is only strengthened by these setbacks.

Let's put all our emotions to work creating the world our children deserve.